


it's (not) fine

by queenieofaces



Series: a wizard named B. Ham [4]
Category: New World Magischola (Live-Action Roleplaying Game)
Genre: Gen, NWM1, NWM: Winter's Cry, also cameos by a million other characters because I'm predictable, self-destructive tendencies and some vaguely suicidal ideation, tiny queer Latina wizard disaster child, with an emphasis on the disaster child
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-17
Updated: 2017-05-17
Packaged: 2018-11-01 22:08:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,955
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10931001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queenieofaces/pseuds/queenieofaces
Summary: She marks off territory that is hers, builds her walls high, and tries to keep the rest of the world out.  “It’s fine,” she says, as if she can bend reality with enough conviction.  “It’s fine.”





	it's (not) fine

**Author's Note:**

> If you're playing second semester with Bea and don't want to know what's going on with her in advance, I recommend skipping this one. All of this information is semi-public at this point and could be put together with enough time and patience (haha, wow, I'm glad that NWM:WC ended in almost all of Bea's secrets getting out, thank goodness, writing around them was exhausting), but it's all put together here in a more or less coherent stream.
> 
> Necessary warnings: Bea is an extremely unreliable narrator and her self-image has not actually improved at all since first semester. She's definitely self-destructive and has some thoughts that could be interpreted as suicidal ideation (she has no desire to die but is absolutely, 100% convinced she will), so proceed with whatever caution you deem necessary.

Beatrisa Hamilton’s first piece of magic is unlearned. It comes to her unbidden, settles in her body and then reaches out to wrap itself around others with clinging tendrils. It brings her thoughts and feelings, bits of trivia and secrets, and she always thought she would be excited about having magic but she _cannot turn it off_.

It's fine. Her family is suddenly dissolving around her, but she has to be strong and keep her mother upright. She can't allow herself to be anything but fine.

***

Beatrisa’s second piece of magic is learned on her neighbor’s rug, knees clutched to her chest, eyes squeezed shut.  Her neighbor--the retired astromancer who first caught on to the way her head overflows with thoughts and feelings that are not hers--surveys her from his armchair, gaze seeming to bore straight into her.

“Picture building a wall,” he tells her.  “Picture building a wall around yourself, around the core of who you are.  Picture building a wall to keep the rest of the world out.”

“I can't see a wall,” she insists, overwhelmed and frustrated after half an hour of fruitless visualizations. “I can't build something that doesn’t exist. This is pointless.”

He sighs, sliding out of his armchair to crouch in front of her. “The point is to attach something concrete and easy to picture to all the stuff in your head.” He taps his temple knowingly. “If you just let it sit there without sorting or processing it, it'll drown you.”

***

Beatrisa learns how to filter, how to process, how to stay afloat even as the tide tries to pull her under. She learns that her neighbor is the embers of a dying fire, the sharp crunch of biting into a green apple, the smell of dried lavender. She learns that her mother is the snap of a bedsheet pulled taut, the familiarity of a lullaby, the pulling stickiness of tar. She does not learn what her father is, and has no need to know what she is. She marks off territory that is hers, builds her walls high, and tries to keep the rest of the world out.  “It’s fine,” she says, as if she can bend reality with enough conviction.  “It’s fine.”

***

Beatrisa receives a wand for her tenth birthday. Or, it's close enough to her birthday--give or take a month--that she assumes it's meant to be a present.

She bites back disappointment when she opens the box--she wasn't expecting anything fancy, but her wand looks and feels distinctly unmagical.

“Cherry,” her mother tells her when she asks, but she can't remember the core--triple eagle something, maybe?

“Cherry,” Bea tells people when they ask, “with triple eagle tendon,” and she grips her wand so tightly that it hurts.

***

Much of the magic she learns at P2A4 doesn't come easy.  Her tongue trips over incantations, and her magic bucks when she tries to cast with a wand, rattling her body and making her hair stand on end. She's rubbish at dueling, subpar at anything that requires improvisation or thinking on her feet--she instinctively reaches for mind magic, not her wand, but that's not appropriate, that's _cheating_.

She's wonders if her wand is cursed, if her mother was somehow conned into buying a defective product, but she knows she's just making excuses. The truth is, magic doesn’t come easy, so she has to work at it, to repeat incantations until they feel less foreign on her tongue and practice wand movements until the magic flows (more or less) how it should instead of rebelling against her.

Maybe it's the year of mind magic training she received before her wand, building the beginnings of her mental barriers on her neighbor’s rug, but she doesn’t use her wand for mind magic unless she has to. The way her professors teach mind magic is foreign to her, incantations and wand movements where she reaches to touch and free associates. While her professors discuss this or that technique for drawing out surface thoughts, Bea brushes against others’ minds and feels emotions reverberating in her bones without any effort. Getting information is no issue for her--she'd rather have less information, to be honest, some switch to flip or faucet to turn to halt the endless barrage. So while she's supposed to be learning how to push herself farther, she teaches herself restraint, keeps her mindreading wound tightly around herself and never, _ever_ lets herself slip.

***

She slips twice at P2A4. The first is an accident. The second is not.

***

Bastian casts effortlessly, incantations rolling off his tongue like a native speaker, artlessly skillful with and without a wand. Bea hates him--hates his smug face and his respectable family and his condescending assistance and how easily magic comes to him, like he doesn’t even need to try, like it never flows backward through his veins and leaves him shaking. He talks about helping the “magically inept,” and she bristles.

Maybe that's why she does it, to prove to him (to herself) that she's _not_.

She's never needed a wand for mind magic, never needed anything other than her hands grasping his and her magic loosened from its restraints and her anger sparking white hot.

***

Bea avoids mirrors for three weeks. It does no favors for her hair, frizzy and snarled in the back and flyaway in the front, but she can't stand to look at herself, to see the way magic curls around her no matter how hard she tries to keep it in. She jumps and flinches at things no one else can see, but she was already jumpy, already flinching at stray thoughts and spikes of emotion. She's already learned how to filter and process incredible amounts of sensory input, so she builds her walls higher and avoids mirrors and struggles to connect what she's learning in class with what she sees. _Magic doesn’t work that way_ , she thinks, _it doesn't flow that way, obviously that won't work, and,_ oh, _this must be what Bastian feels like_ all the time.

Bastian’s power slips away from her, eventually, and she thinks, _Good riddance_ , but she's never been very good at pretending.

***

She prefers not to talk about the trial by drowning.

Some ask, of course, but Bea brushes them off, offering vague platitudes. Prophecies are private things, and no one is willing to pry, so she bites her tongue and hides her destiny in the back of her notebook.

At least her fate is clear. She's been around enough real prophets, felt the secondhand jolt and freefall, to not have any illusions about her own divination abilities, but there are only so many ways to interpret, “A mistake twice made will be your downfall, and so you shall perish.”

 _I just won't make any mistakes_ , she decides, as if fate is ever that easy, and joins the Disciplinary Tribunal first chance she gets.

***

Bea is good at mind magic and not much else. She has accepted this. She doesn't stop trying, practicing until she can cast without stuttering or slipping. But she has accepted that she is a mindreader, that mindreading is what she is _good_ at, that mindreading is what she was _built to do_.

The Registrar tells her she has affinity for tempus magic, and for a moment she thinks she might have some use to the world that doesn’t leave her jittery and wrung out by the echoes of someone else's mind.

She quashes that thought. She is a mindreader. A mindreader who now knows tempus magic, yes, but a mindreader nonetheless.

***

She slips again. It's not her fault. She doesn't know the limits of her new power, hasn't learned how to keep it wound tightly around herself. She does not know that when she reaches for Elliot Cayne’s memories, she is pushing too hard and too fast.

She does not drown in the sudden onslaught. She is a mindreader, and she is good at what she does. She shoves Elliot back into the courtroom and shouts for a Marshal.

***

Bea recuses herself from the Tribunal, hands shaking, although from anger or fear or sickening empathy she couldn't say. It's harder and harder to pay attention to the proceedings, all her energy focused on keeping herself--her breathing, her body, her _magic_ \--under control.

 _I've made a terrible mistake_ , she thinks, and then, faintly, _Oh. I'm going to_ die.

***

Bea is not a prophet, scrapes by in Divination with methodical interpretation that grasps the basic meaning but lacks the flare of true insight. But she was born and raised in Destiny, and once the thought has taken root, she cannot excise it.

She doesn't tell anyone--they would just worry, and she isn't anyone worth worrying about. Still, the knowledge of her own mortality compels her forward.  Every choice she’s presented might be her last chance to make her mark--she needs to make sure she doesn’t bring anyone down with her, but otherwise, there’s no reason not to volunteer her assistance. If someone needs her, if there is some way that she can be _useful_ before she burns out, then, well, maybe this is what she was built to do. She will pick herself apart thread by thread if it means someone else can sew themself back together, and she will shorten her own lifespan if it means someone else’s is lengthened.

It’s fine.  She’s going to die anyway, so she might as well do something useful with the time that remains to her.

***

The problem is, Bea likes tempus magic. She knows it's dangerous, knows it's only for emergency use, knows the Registrar only taught her because he had no other choice. But she likes it. She likes the absolute silence, the absolute stillness when she steps out of time. She likes the way it feels, like anticipation and bated breath and that electrifying moment of calm before a storm.

So she uses it. Losing time isn't an issue--her prophecy means she won't get to use that time normally anyway, so she's just being efficient.  It's practice, she justifies, practice for if (when) she ever needs it. It's practice so she can protect the people she cares about if (when) they're ever in danger. If her practice perfectly aligns with days when everything becomes too much to handle, when the world spills over her walls and threatens to drown her, well.

Well.

***

Delilah--Raegen--is threatening Jason, is threatening Bastian, and Bea knows she needs to do _something_ , step in, shield them, take Raegen down, but she can't move, fear choking her and rooting her to the spot. She knows she's rubbish at dueling, subpar at anything that requires improvisation or thinking on her feet, and her mind is blank except for one spell, the one she isn't supposed to use except in emergencies.

Raegen begins draining Bastian’s magic and Bea forces herself forward, forces her wand up, forces the magic out of herself and wraps it around them all like a shield. For a moment, everything goes absolutely silent, absolutely still, and then reality comes crashing back in.

***

Minerva sends Raegen back, forces her out and away, and Bea doesn't hesitate to lend her strength, her will, her magic. This is easy--letting Minerva direct her, following her lead. This is what Bea was built to do--be a sword wielded by someone else, an unthinking instrument in someone else's hands. She can tune out everything she's just done and every foolhardy choice she's made, and just be _useful_.

(She is sorry when it is over. Or, not sorry, because Delilah is back. But she's still. She's something.)

***

“Picture building a wall,” Bea tells Minerva, and her voice only shakes a little.  “Picture building a wall around yourself, around the core of who you are.”  

She’s gripping Minerva’s hands too tightly, she knows, isn’t doing well enough reinforcing her own mental barriers even as she directs Minerva to build up her own. Minerva is a dagger, a stone watchtower buffeted by a storm, loyalty to the point of martyrdom, and Bea feels like she's going to pull too much of Minerva’s unwavering trust (in her house, in her mentors, in Bea in Bea in Bea and _no one_ should trust her like that) into her lungs and drown.

She's never needed a wand for mind magic, never needed anything other than her strength of will and her sense of self, but that doesn't mean it's _easy_.

***

Bastian informs her that her wand is just a stick, and her first thought is a triumphant, _I knew it_ , and her second thought is, _Oh no_.

***

Milo is the flash of a firefly on a summer night, the steady hum of a protective circle, an unstoppable force moving in an incomprehensible direction. Bea knows what Milo is, _who_ Milo is, can pick his mind out of a crowded room.

That's why she knows immediately that whoever it is wearing Milo's face and demanding her headband isn't _Milo_.

She's never needed a wand for mind magic, never needed anything other than her hands grasping his and her magic reaching for her lost friend and enough conviction to make her voice hard and her gaze sharp. “Give me back Milo,” she demands, and she puts every bit of will and every ounce of magic in her body, behind the command. “Give him back,” she says, but she means, _He's in_ my _house, he's_ my _friend, he's_ mine _, and_ no one _hurts what's_ mine. “Leave now,” she says, but she means, _I don't care if you're a spirit or a ghost or a god, if you hurt him, I_ will _destroy you, don't think that I won't_.

Afterwards, Andrew tells her, “Beatrisa, I'm glad you're on our side, because you're _terrifying_ ,” and she has no idea what he means.

***

Bea has learned to build up her walls, filter and process the outside world, keep her mindreading wound tightly around herself and never, _ever_ let herself slip. Bea is a mindreader, but she is a mindreader with a code of chivalry, a conscience that sounds suspiciously like her housemates, and a metric ton of anxiety holding her back. Bea is powerful (too powerful, she thinks, some days, or maybe powerful in the wrong ways), but she won't let herself be ruthless.

The problem is, she never expected to be hit with a stray curse. The problem is, she never expected to see Milo but perceive him as her mortal enemy.

She’s never needed a wand for mind magic, never needed anything other than her hands pushing him to the ground and a decade of carefully maintained restraint discarded in the wake of the burning desire to _hurt_ him.

Roxy intercedes and mind magic is useless here, glancing off her as insubstantial as mist. Bea reaches for the only other spell in her arsenal, the only other thing she's ever really been _good_ at.

The next few seconds are a blur of pain in her side, her body hitting the ground hard enough to knock the breath from her lungs, the echoes of a dozen panicked minds around her. Someone heals her--she never sees who, too busy fighting her way out from under the curse’s influence.

She's back on her feet a few moments later, stammering apologies and sprinting back toward Milo. It's easy to wrap them both in tempus magic, pull them out of time and away from the battle raging around them. She needs to atone for her mistakes, needs to keep Milo safe no matter the cost to herself.  But with each insistence of “It's fine,” Milo becomes more distressed, demanding answers she cannot give.

***

Dan Obeah worries. Bea has seen this a thousand times over, the house worrying about a problem and then banding together to fix it, no matter how insurmountable it may be. She's seen them agree that their first priority is to keep the first-years safe, scared second- and third-year students prepared to take a stand against an unknown enemy in order to protect their own. She's seen them stand for Jayden, a wall of bodies between them and anyone who might mean them harm.

Dan Obeah worries, which is part of the reason she loves the house. They can do anything they put their minds to, turn idealism into concrete reality through sheer collective force of will.

Dan Obeah worries, but they were never meant to worry about her. She isn't anyone worth worrying about.

And yet.

And yet here is Milo, upset and pushing back, telling her he doesn't want her time.  Here too is Andrew--the warmth of sunlight on an upturned face, the stinging crackle of static electricity, and a depth of care for his loved ones that leaves Bea breathless on good days and painfully aware of her own inadequacies on bad ones.  Andrew lives up to his nickname, turning the full force of his affection and concern on her, and Bea has never wanted anything more but also knows she doesn’t _deserve_ it.

Robin asks her during Truth or Truth if she'll tell them when she needs help, and she says, “No,” because she cannot lie.

***

Once she returns to her mother’s house from the lodge, Bea unmoors herself from time and lets herself drift and breathe. She will have to go back to school soon, deal with her house’s poking and prying and misguided attempts to save her, but for a moment she has a brief respite, absolute stillness and silence, anticipation and bated breath, that electrifying moment of calm before a storm.

 _It's fine_ , she thinks, as if she can bend reality with enough conviction.

It's fine.

It's fine.

**Author's Note:**

> Guess who is excited for second semester? It's me. I'm excited.
> 
> Also, hi, friends who did NWM1 who weren't at WC. Some, uh. Some stuff sure did happen. Some secrets sure did get out. Bea sure is a functional person who is having an okay time and making okay decisions.
> 
> (For the most authentic reading experience, please imagine me whispering, "Calm down, Bea," after any given line of this story.)


End file.
